Does the Facebook Phone Have a Market? – How About for $249 Unlocked?

If two more days is just too long to hold out, the good news courtesy of Android Police is that the specs and features of the Facebook phone have well and truly crept out of the woodwork, along with a few of its features.

As far as the really important stuff goes, the Facebook Phone – aka the HTC Myst – will indeed be a mid-range marvel with a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel camera, 4.3-inch display and HTC Sense 4.5 running on top of Android Jelly Bean. In terms of confirmed features, the Facebook Phone has been designed to cleverly usurp priority from everything else on the phone as a whole and will replace the standard homescreen, with Facebook Chat running permanently in the background.

This Thursday should see the rest of the details laid bare include its release date, but it’s impossible not to question whether or not we really need a Facebook Phone. Is a market of millions ready and waiting, or is it the answer to a call that simply hasn’t been made?

Well, it sort of depends on what it brings to the table in terms of features, but in my personal opinion the success or otherwise of the Facebook phone comes down to one thing and one thing alone…its price.

Technically speaking, a Facebook Phone with the above-listed mid-range specs and features could launch for a quite staggeringly low unlocked price-tag. It could by rights prove to be the Kindle Fire of the Smartphone world…i.e one that makes next to no money on initial sales but rakes in a fortune in content and marketing revenues.

If things go this way, there’s no reason why we can’t see an unlocked Facebook Phone hitting the market for no more than about $250 – just look as how the Google Nexus 4 ups the ante for little more than this.

In fact, this is probably way more likely than not as were the Facebook Phone to launch for anything other than a bargain price, chances are there wouldn’t be many out there won over by the moderately enhanced experience the tweaked OS brings.

After all, the Facebook Phone might make Facebook easier for addicts, but is pretty unlikely to deliver anything bog-standard Facebook doesn’t already.

We’ll find out Thursday, but we reckon you can bank on a pretty serious and thus tempting bargain.